Upgrade or new install ?

[GregM]

I have two computers. One now has 20.04 and one has 18.04.
It shows the USB drive in dolphin but it says it is not mounted. When I try to mount it by mouse click it says it can't

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, when I said: 'Just how does it "say" it?' I meant, the actual message you get.

Still, I also said:

Also note that it's better to copy to the non-running system from the old one, or if it is a physically separate machine, do it from the "live" medium - or you'll run into "lock" problems.

so whatever the mounting problem is, it's a bit of a moot point in this instance.
You really don't want to copy your settings to a running system.

If you still have the "live" installation medium (DVD/USB/whatever) what I would advise you to do is to boot from that, and (assuming you have a spare USB port :·) copy the /home without 20.04 running.

[jglen490]

I have two computers. One now has 20.04 and one has 18.04.
It shows the USB drive in dolphin but it says it is not mounted. When I try to mount it by mouse click it says it can't

I've found that on mine it takes a little time for everything (whatever that is) to get it's stuff together. I check dmesg in a konsole first after attaching a USB device, then if the device shows up, then I click on the the Devices link in Dolphin when the device shows up. If I get the red "cannot mount" error box, I'll clear it, give a few seconds and try again. It usually shows up; but, it's all about time and timing, and overall it doesn't take a lot of time. I'm working on patience

[GregM]

What a mess.
It looks for like Ubuntu than Kubuntu.
I don't think I will be in a hurry to move to 20.04

[kyonides]

I'm sorry to read about your complains with K20, but I also find that weird. Besides the pkexec issue Cilly exposed some time ago, I pretty much feel K20.04 is a really optimized product for a Canonical based distro. XD Even so the issue isn't highly important. The only thing I really hate is that snap gets installed by default.

Ever since I installed Kubuntu the day after it was released officially, I haven't had the need to reinstall it or some important portion of its components. If I ever did, they consisted of stuff that got upgraded like Plasma 5.18.5 and the like.

Why I don't get but isn't a real issue is how can networkmanager be slow in Kubuntu when Fedora you take a look at the nm icon and it takes a second or two to recognized a network. In Kubuntu 18 and 20 that always take like 6 seconds. Weird right?

[GreyGeek]

My wife uses (although not as much as she used to since she has gradually been doing more and more on her iPhone) an Acer Aspire One 521 Notebook, circa 2010, with 2GB of RAM and an Athlon II Neo Processor K125 (1.7GHz).

She's had Kubuntu 18.04 on it since it went beta and has not had any issues, except forgetting how to use it and asking me for help. I decided to upgrade it to Kubuntu 20.04 and used the "do-release-upgrade" with the third party option. To make the upgrade process more reliable I plugged a cat 5 cable from the router into the 521, giving it a 500Mbps connection.

I started the process at 8:30PM and at 12:20AM it was done. I watched for the occasional prompt so I doubt more than 5 minutes in total was wasted waiting for me to enter y or N. After the reboot I was presented with a plasma 5.18 desktop that looked and worked exactly as the previous desktop, except that it was faster.

The whole process was as smooth as silk.

Why didn't I use the USB stick I already had and just do a twenty minute fresh install? Because I didn't want to spend several hours reinstalling specific apps, bookmarks, KMail, and FF URL links.

PS: I spent all that time watching YT videos.

[CharlieDaves]

I can't tell you what you should do, but I will tell my approach.

My routine for the past three LTS upgrades has been a clean install of the OS, using a partitioning method that keeps / and /home on two separate partitions - and on this latest try on two separate drives. In general this involves backing up /home, and I back up everything including the "." folders and files. When I was reusing the drives, I formatted the /partition, and selected but did NOT format /home. Then I did the install using the "something" else (now called "manual") installation method so I could selectively format. The end result is an upgrade to the OS and applications, along with preservation of data and configs.

I did try 20.04, but for reasons not connected to the suitability or performance of 20.04, I needed to drop back to 18.04.4. I am looking forward to 20.04.1 in July, and will perfrom a clean install using the process described above.

So how do you achieve this? As in separate partitions & Why?

I *need* to upgrade from 18.04.4 to 20.04 as most ubuntu controled release software is about 5months out of date, and some is no longer working (Virtual Box) as an example. I could manually upgrade, but my personal experiences in the past of manually installing software, when it's available in the discover muon is you can no longer update it, and I can't get it uninstalled. I end up with crap software on my PC.

Q. Wouldn't having /home on a different drive, when you do a clean install cause problems?

Thanks.
Charles.
PS I am still reading whatever I can find on upgrading 18 to 20.

[jglen490]

Having /home on a separate partition allows you to preserve /home during a fresh install, and thereby keep and upgrade the configs found in the "."files which are on your /home. Having the /home partition mounted on a separate drive is a convenience and helps protect /home in case of a drive failure. The chances of two drives failing at the same time is pretty small. But, if a drive fails and it has both / and /home regardless of partitioning, then very likely /home is gone also. In either case, before doing a fresh install or an in-place upgrade - BACKUP YOUR DATA AND FILES

When doing a fresh install, tell the installer what you want to do. It used to be called the "something else" install option. That way you can select your /home partition and/or drive, but not check the Format box. That's what protects /home and automatically allows for a correct fstab entry for /home. Select the Format button on the / partition, select the grub install location - based on GPT or MBR - and let the install continue.

If you have backed up your /home before starting, and should something do wrong with the install, you still have your data preserved.

But that's just the way I roll. Fresh or upgrade, it still takes time. I have a TV next to my computer desk, and a couple of books on that TV stand, so there's plenty to keep me occupied during the process. Putting a stopwatch on the process does nothing except to increase anxiety about the process. Mash the button, reply to a few prompts, then go off and do something else. Most of the time it's just going to work.